[Chris Gorman]

The batch monitor was still showing a progress bar and about 10 mins. remaining after over 40 hrs. compression time on the 10b unc QTmovie. So, I think the batch monitor was broken, or something was wrong with the file.

Finally, when I looked at the m2v file in it’s destination folder, it looked done. If I can judge by the “created” vs. “modidified” time listed for the file, which showed a 3 hr. difference, maybe the compression actually took 3 hours.

So I burned a DVD and it did not look good. The other one I burned from the hdv QT movie to compressor looks better than the 10b unc.

This 90 min. video did not have much movement in most of it, was cuts only edit, one short clip had a filter, and several had color correction. Otherwise, no complicated effects, no graphics.

Concerning “rendering”, does Compressor require that any QT sc movie from fcp be rendered in fcp before export, or can you dump or not do the render in fcp and let Compressor do it.

My major concern is final quality, but time starts to become a critical factor when it gets excessive.

[Chris Gorman]

Thanks. If you mean the “batch monitor”, that now tells me 7.56 mins. remaining, 31 hours lapsed. The 31 hours is accurate by my own clock.

Yes, I’ve noticed about the audio, but that was done long ago and is no longer part of these estimates.

I’m guessing it will take about 35 hours, I saw that estimate once on a previous attempt on something else where I opted out.

As long as there’s no error I might as well complete it . . .but never again. There’s got to be a better way.

[Chris Gorman]

I’m on a G5 dual 2.3, 3.5MB Ram, FCP6. It takes about 7 mins. to render a one min. clip using the 10 bit unc., render hi prec.yuv, best motion. The only effect on the clip is a color correction for

Same clip takes 6 mins.to conform/render 1080i hdv, render 8bit yuv, best motion.

Unless I did something wrong, it seems like this workflow would not be a viable option because of having to re-render my fcp TL for the 10b seq., making 2 very long renders before going to compressor. . . unless compressor time with the 10b unc. is significantly shorter than with an hdv sc QT movie.

Do you think it is, or am I doing something wrong? If it does not save much time, does it give significantly better image quality?

[Chris Gorman]

I think I screwed up when doing the “General” seq. settings (maybe i can blame in on sleep deprivation).

In the gen. tab, top few lines, what do I choose for frame size, pixel aspect ratio?

I was unsure about the above, but for other stuff under this tab I chose Anamorphic though I questioned if it was necessary, field dominance at lower/even, QT/compressor set to Unc, 10 bit.

(My edited footage was hdv 1080i)

[Chris Gorman]

OK, but I want to clarify a couple confusing things. Even though I’m starting with 8 bit footage, you say I drop it into a 10 bit sd unc sequence. Why is that?

I see that it also has to change all the footage to lower field from the upper field as it goes from hdv to sd. I suppose that’s necessary, but maybe that’s what adds to render time.

The 10b unc in fcp is taking 15 hours to render this 90 minute video. (even though all the footage was fully rendered in the hdv seq).

At this point I’m not at the final step of going to compressor, so I can’t see how much time compressor will take on this new QT movie from the 10 bit unc.

You think it saves enough time (while maintaining quality) to make it worth the additional long render in fcp?

[Chris Gorman]

In the seq. settings, should I use “Render 10 bit in high precision . . .” or Render all YUV in high precision…”?

My hdv footage is 8 bit.

[Chris Gorman]

I’ll try that, but what’s better, should I bring the hdv QT and drop that on the new sequence and render, or just copy my hdv TL footage and paste into the new 10b unc seq. and render?

[Chris Gorman]

I just made a bars/tone DVD and checked both my ntsc monitor and tv.

ntsc is good (see my other recent post re: I adjusted it). My t.v. is a bit bright, eg., the pluge bar is more than just barely visible.

Of course it’s my ntsc monitor I use for production and evaluation, but then I also play it on my consumer set just to see one example of a “worst case scenario”.

Thank you for your prompt and useful help.

[Chris Gorman]

OK, I just checked my ntsc monitor (not tv), which I hadn’t calibrated recently.

I put some fcp bars into a sequence and then view on both my cinema display and ntsc which is hooked up to an mxo box.

The pluge bar was a bit bright, so I brought it down, but not as far down as I would have if I were working with less ambient light on my monitor. So I adjusted the pluge now for my daytime viewing, making it barely visible.

Now I played two versions of my DVD on a set top playing out to this ntsc monitor. At least now the first one, without gamma and brightness adjusted in compressor, looks more acceptable.

The 2nd version DVD, with the gamma and brightness adjusted in compressor, also looks acceptable, maybe a bit preferable in some scenes if you creatively like deeper blacks ( I do ).

The lighter one looks really bad on my sony tv. set which I cannot adjust. It also looks really washed out when I viewed it on a sony hdtv at circuit city . . .where i could not adjust the settings.

I’m just bummed how bad mpeg-2 DVD quality looks, after enjoying how good it looks before going to mpeg-2.

[Chris Gorman]

I’m responding to my own post here as a follow up. I bailed from the 40+ estimated hours compression and re-did the custom settings.

With the revised settings, looks like it’s only going to take a few hours. I turned frame controls off, and changed the dolby 2.0 to 192kbps.

I’ll see what happens . . . hard to believe only a few hours. The same footage took 20+ hours last week, when I compressed it using Apple’s default settings for 90 min. sd dvd with dolby 2.0.